I’m Scared to Drive Because LASD Almost Killed Me
Everything is so surreal as I drive down the main streets of Los Angeles during a late night nearly seven years ago. We’re all listening to hip-hop music play on the radio, and the city of Los Angeles is glistening with colorful night lights and bright tunnels as we make our way downtown. It’s as if we’re all in a game of Mario Kart, for ecstasy assists with magnifying the intensity of the night.
It is a night when we — my roommates Chaz Jones, Tylen Whitt, and I — are intoxicated and have to drive to pick up another roommate from the downtown Los Angeles Union Station earlier than expected, and it somehow throws off the course of the night.
Our car comes to a temporary stop because Whitt persistently asks to find parking. So we switch seats and Whitt becomes the driver. He unknowingly parks the car the wrong way on North Main Street and East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, prompting the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to profile us—three Black men — walk up to our vehicle minutes later, and pull out guns on us because the deputies thought the vehicle was stolen. This time, I’m in the driver’s seat.
Our roommate Jan Harkness had to take a trip to Las Vegas to visit her son and needed me to pick her up from Union Station when she got back. So she left me her keys.
“Don’t you fucking move, or I shoot you,” a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy yells at me as I attempt to put back on my shoes. He continues yelling with a gun directly pointed at me.
“Put your hands on the wheel!” the deputy yells. “Whose car is this?”
“It’s my roommate’s — Jan Harkness,” I say, shaking and cautious of every movement.
That’s when other authority officials illegally begin to search the car without my consent, as the deputy continues to point a gun at my head. The authority officials then tell both Whitt and Jones to exit the vehicle. They’re placed in handcuffs, and I’m one move away from getting killed as another deputy checks the car’s registration to see if it belongs to Harkness. Once the department confirms that the vehicle is Harkness’s, the sheriff’s department digresses, and the deputy with the gun pointed to my head puts away his weapon.
Since that night that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department decided to profile my roommates and me as young Black thugs stealing cars, I have not driven a car again. I almost died at the hands of authority officials, and it caused me trauma that later exacerbated to PTSD, which I’m still currently working through.
After lowering their weapons, the sergeant asks me how drunk I am because his deputies found an open container of alcohol in the backseat where both Whitt and Jones sat. I tell him that I am not bad enough to drive, for I sobered up a little before the deputies approached the car, minutes after Whitt parked it the wrong way.
Whitt and Jones are getting questioned by the deputies too, and they’re telling conflicting stories. I mean, we’re all Black. It’s understandable. And from zero to 100, we barely escaped death. Our anxiety slowly goes back down to at least a 70. Then the sergeant demands I leave the area and find parking somewhere else, or he was going to arrest me. So I do.
Harkness calls me minutes later to tell me that the train returning from Las Vegas dropped her off at the Union Station and asked if I’m close. I tell her that I’m around the corner and to wait at the front of the station to get picked up. Within seconds I see Harkness and honk the horn to get her attention. She sees me, then opens up the side door to place her luggage inside. She then walks over to my door.
“Get out. I’m driving,” Harkness said. Perhaps the sweetest words my ears hear the entire night.
Harkness wasn’t aware, however, of the encounter we had with the sheriff’s department before entering the car. So I told her after we switched seats. She began driving as I took a deep breath to say, “We almost got killed by the sheriffs.”
It’s as if her heart sunk like an anchor in the sea. Her devastation is beyond words, and she feels guilty that she had me pick her up. However, systemic racism is not her fault. And I didn’t mind picking her up from the Union Station. Also, these types of situations are just some of the consequences of being Black.
The unfortunate murder of George Floyd by former police officer Derek Chauvin has set a precedent of justice against law enforcement. The reality, however, is that although Floyd’s death opens a new chapter to policing across the nation, Blacks and other people of color are still profiled and killed by authority officials across the nation. I’m grateful that I did not fall into that category the night I picked up Harkness. However, whenever I witness vehicular police brutality or hear stories about racially involved shootings, I’m back at not wanting to drive again because the PTSD resurfaces.
As I near the end of my senior year at California State University, Northridge, I’m more conscious that eventually, I’m going to have to buy and drive a car soon. It’s demanding of my career. Also, I need to work on fully overcoming symptoms of PTSD to be more successful than I currently am in life.
However, there’s still that voice in the back of my mind that revisits the event of almost getting shot at whenever I sit in the driver’s seat of any car, even if it is parked. I’ve been in and out of therapy for nearly three years, trying to overcome the fear of being behind the wheel. Not only behind the wheel but also driving the streets of L/A.
I’m not the one whose hobby is pointing the finger at others. However, the LA County Sheriff’s Department is at fault for bad policing and having multiple people experience mental trauma, and not just of my incident that happened nearly seven years ago. The department is recently under fire for killing a Black man who allegedly dropped a gun and made gestures to retrieve it. And according to NBC News, the family is suing the county for $35 million.
Perhaps when stories about Black or other people of color dying in the hands of authority officials lessens, even narratives that aren’t vehicularly related, I may go ahead and buy a car and drive it more than around the corner and back. Perhaps even find a new hobby of just driving around town.
However, I have to jump the hurdle that’s blocking my path to reach the goal. That is, eventually getting back behind the wheel and driving on congested freeways like the infamous 405 or through the streets of L.A. with many agitated drivers ready to sometimes do the worst to other drivers out of frustration about how those drivers are driving their vehicles.
There I go again. It’s a perpetuated cycle of apprehension that keeps me from hitting the roads. The thing is, I am completely aware that it’s how I cope with the anxiety to help mitigate exacerbated thoughts about the possible worst things that could perhaps happen while being behind the wheel.
Most people listen to music. Some listen to audiobooks. Then there are those individuals who sit in complete silence while driving. Now, that’s something that I know I definitely cannot do. Whatever it is, though, I have to find a niche that’ll sustain me each time I bravely open the door to a car, place the keys into the ignition, take the car out of park, and drive.
